“The sky, though foreign, is mine to bleed into. What was lost feeds the roots of what will grow.”
— Dreamland Conspiracy, Beneath the Tides of Becoming
Cale’s first thought was that it was a drone. He’d spotted it while parked along the side of the highway, aimlessly staring out the window of his squad car. The blacklight beam it cast was faint and strange—so faint that if his eyes hadn’t been drawn to the movement of an owl winging across Ladysmith Harbour, he’d have missed it altogether.
Drones weren’t unusual; kids and hobbyists flew them all the time. But this one hovered high, well above the altitude limit, and that put it in the danger zone for aircraft descending toward Nanaimo Airport.
For a moment, he did nothing but watch it, frowning at its eerie stillness against the stars. The blacklight illuminated nothing around it.
“Dispatch,” Cale said into his radio, leaning forward and craning his neck to keep it in view. “Ten-Bravo.”
“Go ahead, Ten-Bravo.” The dispatcher’s voice was distant, staticky—more than usual, even for E-Comm.
“I’ve got eyes on what looks like a drone, pretty high up above the Harbour. Could be over a thousand feet. Can we get someone else to confirm?”
“Stand by, Ten-Bravo,” the voice crackled back.
Cale sighed and adjusted his rearview mirror, his other hand drumming lightly on the wheel. His thoughts drifted. He’d always loved this time of night—quiet, steady, when the world felt manageable. But lately, quiet was just another way of saying lonely. The divorce was finalized a month ago, and he still felt like he was living in a daze.
He shifted in his seat, the cool leather pressing against his back. She hadn’t been wrong to leave. He could admit that. Between the late shifts, the exhaustion, and his inability to talk about anything deeper than where they’d ordered dinner from, what kind of life had he even given her? But knowing that didn’t stop the ache.
Movement near the bushes broke his spiral of self-recrimination. He turned his head sharply, catching a brief twitch of foliage on the edge of his headlights. Just a rabbit, probably. Nothing else moved that low or that fast.
He exhaled and shook his head, then looked back up toward the drone.
There was something about the way it hovered, motionless and silent, that put him on edge. The fact that it had blacklight at all was odd. Most people went for brighter setups—something flashy, fun, easy to see. He couldn’t shake the way it felt like it was watching something—or someone.
The uneasy quiet of the night didn’t help. Even the usual sounds—the faint rustle of leaves, the occasional distant bark of a dog—felt muted. The night was bright with a nearly full moon, but it was as though the usual hum of life had stilled.
A few minutes later, his radio crackled again. “Ten-Bravo, call Ten-Tango,” came a different voice. Sergeant Boone, his Watch Commander.
“Ten-Bravo,” Cale responded.
“I see it too,” Boone said. “I’m up on Sixth. Over a thousand feet, for sure. Blacklight. Weird. Dispatch, can you notify Transport Canada and Nanaimo ATC?”
“Ten-Four,” Dispatch replied, though the static distorted the words.
Cale leaned back, releasing a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding. He let his eyes wander back to the drone. It still hadn’t moved. It was weird, sure. But it wasn’t his problem anymore. Better to just let the Air Traffic Control team at the airport deal with it.
Cale returned to his watch, scanning the stretch of highway before him. The slow rhythm of night duty in Ladysmith had its own comforts. Traffic lights flashed in steady patterns down the highway. The blinking cell tower up on top of the Woodley Range stood tall and unbothered.
His thoughts drifted, as they often did on nights like this. Ladysmith wasn’t much—a postcard town with retirees, tradespeople, and young families. A tourist pitstop. Maybe not much to protect, but it was home. Not that his job made him feel like a hero most days. More often than not, he was breaking up fights at the pub, administering a Narcan injection, or mediating disputes over someone’s 4x4 being too loud.
The crackle of his radio brought him back. “Ten-Bravo, call Ten-Tango,” Boone’s voice again.
“Ten-Bravo,” Cale replied.
“You uhh… you seeing that, Ten-Bravo?”
Cale frowned and looked toward the harbour. The drone was still there—but something was different. It was bigger. Brighter.
“Hang on,” Cale muttered, leaning forward. The edges of the light seemed to pulse, oscillating. Not like a drone at all.
His unease spiked. The owl he’d noticed earlier was circling high, its movements erratic, wings jittering in strange starts and stops. The nearby brush twitched as though disturbed, though no wind blew.
Before he could even reply to Boone, the drone—if it even was one—flared. A blinding violet light burst from it, filling his vision. Cale jerked back, cursing, his hand instinctively shielding his eyes, followed by a deafening crack.
The light vanished, only to return with a force that felt alive. It surged outward, expanding rapidly. His radio squealed violently—every frequency seeming to clash at once, a cacophony that made him wince.
The light reached the harbour, spreading toward the shore with relentless speed. A wave of dizziness crashed into him, so sudden and overwhelming that he fell forward, barely catching himself against the steering wheel.
“What the fuck—” he managed, the words slurring as pressure and pain built in his head. His stomach churned violently, and when he tried to stand, his legs gave out.
The light washed over him, enveloping everything. His ears rang as though the entire world had screamed at once. The sensation was unbearable: weightless yet crushing, searing yet cold. He collapsed onto the ground outside his cruiser, gasping for breath.
Somewhere nearby, the owl screeched—a wild, anguished sound that cut off suddenly. The silence that followed was absolute.
Cale struggled to his knees, the world tilting sickeningly around him. The violet glow was everywhere, but it cast no shadows. It passed through him, through the cruiser, through the trees.
What the hell was it? Some kind of radiation? A bomb?
His thoughts scattered as the ground beneath him began to tremble. The earthquake came fast and hard, throwing him sideways. He clung to the cruiser’s door for support, heart hammering, until the shaking finally subsided.
Then the light simply popped out of existence, leaving a violent rush of wind in its wake. The trees around him swayed and creaked in response. The streetlights were dark, his radio silent.
For a long moment, there was only the night—the sound of his ragged breathing, and then, gradually, the calls of animals returning to the woods.
“What the fuck was that?” he whispered.
The radio crackled faintly. “Ten-Bravo, call Ten-Tango,” Boone’s voice said, strained.
“Copy,” Cale rasped, dragging himself back into his seat.
“What’s your sixty-six?”
Cale gave himself a once-over. The nausea still lingered, and his ears needed to pop from the change in pressure, but he was pretty sure he was okay.
“Sixty-six is… I’m okay.”
“Ten-Charlie? Sixty-six?”
“I’m okay,” came the voice of Shelly Littleton, the other on-duty officer. “But what the hell just happened? I’ve never seen anything like that.”
“Dispatch, copy?” Boone asked.
There was only silence.
“Comms might be down,” Boone said. “Any of you got a signal?”
Cale quickly pulled his phone from out of his vest pocket. No bars. No signal. He looked up toward the cell tower up on the Woodley Range. “Looks like the tower’s down,” he said. Just then, something else caught his eye. A blue glow from above the ridge that peeked over. It wasn’t the same as the blacklight– if that’s what it was. This was softer, more diffused. “Anyone have eyes eastbound? Over Woodley Ridge? I’m seeing another light, can’t make out the source.”
“Stand by,” Boone responded. There was a moment of silence over the radio.
Cale took a moment to become distracted by more movement from the bush nearby as the owl took flight.
“Jesus fucking Christ,” Boone replied. The transmission shocked Cale. Boone had been known to be prone to anger, but he usually had enough sense not to swear on comms. His tone spoke volumes. It reeked of shock. “Littleton, do you have eyes on this?”
“10-4,” Shelly replied. Her voice wasn’t any better.
“What is it?” Cale asked.
“It’s a fucking planet,” Boone replied.
The author's content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.
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Terra jolted upright, her heart racing, her breath catching in the heavy silence of the room. The nightmare’s edges were already slipping away, but its weight lingered—a hollow ache pressing against her ribs. She pushed a fiery cascade of red hair out of her face, the glowing strands catching the faint light from her phone. Her surroundings felt warped, wrong. Posters of celestial maps and surrealist art curled at the edges, their familiar images foreign in the dim light. The shelf above her bed sagged under the weight of books, crystals, and mismatched trinkets, casting distorted shadows that crawled across the walls.
Her phone’s glow flared sharply as she reached for it, the light slicing through the gloom. She stared at the screen, but the words were blurred by the sleep still present in her eyes. A prickling sensation skittered over her skin, faint at first but growing stronger, like a static charge building in the air. It wasn’t a sound, not exactly—a low, vibrating hum pressed against her skull, setting her teeth on edge. The room felt too still, like the universe was holding its breath.
Then she noticed the light.
At first, it was just a faint violet shimmer bleeding through the edges of her blackout curtains. But it grew quickly, unnaturally, slicing through the darkness like jagged glass. It caught the hanging prism in her window, shattering into spectral fragments that scattered across her room. Terra’s breath hitched as the shimmer intensified, transforming into a sharp, predatory brilliance.
She swung her legs over the side of the bed, her feet meeting the icy floorboards. The chill was grounding, but it wasn’t enough to shake the creeping terror tightening her chest. Terra pushed the worn hem of her t-shirt down over her lap as she stood. Step by hesitant step, she approached the window, her fingers brushing the curtain edge. The light surged again, its intensity blinding, and the room seemed to fold in on itself.
The wave hit her.
Not heat. Not force. Something stranger, more alien. It crawled over her skin, electric and invasive, sinking into her bones. Terra collapsed to her knees as pain erupted behind her eyes, sharp and relentless, as though her skull were splitting open. Her breath came in ragged gasps as the room around her warped, its edges rippling like the surface of disturbed water. The hum evolved into a gnawing void, a sensation that clawed at her insides.
And the silence. It was alive, vibrating with a terrible absence, pressing against her thoughts with a weight that made her want to scream. She couldn’t hear her own breathing, couldn’t feel her own voice in her throat. The violet light consumed everything, obliterating shadows and sense alike. Within its glow, fractals danced—impossible, incomprehensible shapes, twisting and flickering with what seemed like a predatory intelligence. Terra’s chest tightened as a cold spike of terror drove through her.
The floor shuddered violently, tossing her against the bed frame. A framed photo of her and Lily crashed to the ground, glass shattering like brittle ice. Terra barely registered it. Then, just as suddenly as it began, the light imploded inward, leaving the room drenched in suffocating silence. The sharp scent of ozone filled her nostrils as the pain ebbed away, leaving her gasping and trembling on the floor.
She forced herself upright, leaning heavily against her desk. Her favorite mug lay cracked in a puddle of wax, her candles scattered across the floor like forgotten remnants. With shaking hands, she pulled the curtain aside.
Her heart stopped.
The streetlights were dark, the usual glow of the town replaced by a consuming blackness. But there, in the sky over the harbour, hung an impossible vision—a planet. It wasn’t the moon. It was massive, its surface a swirl of shifting oceans, continents, and clouds that glowed faintly, alive with blues, greens, and whites. Its light bathed the town in an eerie luminescence, beautiful and terrifying in equal measure.
A sudden tremor rattled the apartment. Books tumbled from their shelves, and the wall clock fell with a dull crash. Terra stumbled back from the window as Lily’s panicked voice rang out from the hallway.
“Terra! Are you okay?”
She threw her door open and nearly collided with Lily, who clutched at her tank top like a lifeline. Her dark brown hair was tied back, though several strands clung to her sweat-dampened face.
“Did you see that?” Lily’s voice cracked, her wide eyes reflecting Terra’s own fear.
Before Terra could answer, a loud, frantic knock came at the door. Both women froze.
“Terra? Lily?” Ryan’s voice was muffled but strained.
Lily unlocked the door, and Ryan barged in from the apartment’s hallway, disheveled and shirtless, his face pale. His tousled brown hair caught the eerie glow of the planet outside, but it was his eyes—intense and calculating—that held Terra’s focus. “Are you okay? Did you guys see…?” He seemed at a loss to say the words.
“That light? I’ve never seen or felt anything like that,” Lily said, her voice trembling. “It went right through me.”
“Guys,” Terra interrupted, her voice tight. She pointed to the window. “Look.”
They turned to the glowing planet hanging impossibly in the sky like it had always been there. Its otherworldly light cast a pale hue across the room, exaggerating every angle of their faces. The air was thick with unspoken fear, pressing down on them like a weight they couldn’t escape.
“What the fuck is that?” Lily whispered.
“I don’t know,” Ryan said, his voice hollow.
Terra tore her eyes away from the window. “We need to figure out what’s happening.” She bent over to pick her phone up from the floor, making sure to avoid the broken glass. She went to make a call, but noticed her phone didn’t have a signal. “No signal. Lily, grab your phone.”
Lily dashed to her room and returned seconds later, shaking her head. “No dice.”
Ryan nodded grimly. “Let’s check downtown. There’ll be people. Someone has to know something.”
“Give me a minute to change,” Terra said, already moving toward her room. “And you need to at least put a shirt on.”
“Do you think it’s safe out there?” Lily asked.
Terra stopped, her hand gripping the doorframe. She looked back at the glowing planet. “If that thing’s real, do you think it’s any safer in here?”
The finality in her voice silenced them. Lily nodded, her expression grim, and Ryan headed for the door. Terra slipped into her room, her hands trembling as she dressed. Through the window, the light of the planet continued to seep into every corner of her reality.
Whatever the thing in the sky was, Terra got the nagging sense it was there to stay.
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Cale squinted through his cruiser’s windshield, the darkened highway stretching ahead like an endless ribbon. The usual hum of highway activity was absent, replaced by an eerie, oppressive silence. Only the muted purr of his engine broke the quiet.
Ahead, the faint glow of the Nanaimo International Airport flickered irregularly. Emergency lights dotted a few buildings, casting strange, weak shadows on the tarmac. Even from that distance, something felt wrong. The buildings themselves seemed… incomplete. Their outlines shimmered oddly under the eerie glow of the massive planet that hung low in the sky, its ethereal light painting the darkness in hues of dull blue and silver.
Cale tightened his grip on the steering wheel, his unease growing.
As he approached the entrance of the airport, he noticed something odd. A cluster of vehicles—two trucks and several commuter cars—were parked haphazardly along the shoulder and highway itself. People milled about, illuminated by his approaching headlights. The erratic movements of the figures and the way they lingered in the middle of the road sent a chill up his spine.
He slowed the cruiser and scanned the scene. Then blinked. Something was wrong. Not with the people, with the road. He flicked on his beacons, illuminating both the people and the forest beyond them.
A forest that shouldn’t have been there.
What should have been a straight, uninterrupted stretch of highway now ended abruptly. A forest—dense, ancient, and unyielding—loomed within the reach of his red and blue beacon lights. A mass of gnarled trunks and tangled branches cast warped shadows on the asphalt.
Cale rolled to a stop and stepped out of the cruiser. His boots crunched against some loose gravel on the asphalt as he approached the group. The air was thick and heavy, the night deathly still save for a faint vibration he could almost feel in his bones.
“Officer!” a man in a grease-stained ballcap called out. He was pacing near a semi, gesturing wildly. “You seein’ this? Tell me you seein’ this!”
“I see it,” Cale replied, scanning the scene. His flashlight beam cut across the severed highway in both directions. The forest stretched in as far as he could see, subtly curving toward town the further out it went. He turned his attention back to the edge of the highway.
The road ended in a perfect, surgical line. The asphalt’s cross-section was unnaturally smooth, polished like glass. No cracks, no rubble, no signs of an explosion—just a sharp divide. On the other side, the forest loomed, its towering trees alien in their presence. The trunks were grotesquely thick, their roots bulging and sprawling like swollen veins. A few of them had been cut in exactly the same fashion as the road.
“What the hell happened here?”
A man in business attire standing near the front of a car turned to Cale, his face pale and his eyes hollow. “It was the light,” he muttered. “It was like one of those UV lights, but… different. It swallowed everything. Swallowed us.”
“We almost crashed,” a woman in a hoodie said, clutching a trembling dog to her chest. The animal let out a low growl as its eyes fixated on the trees. “There was so much pain, like it was eating me alive. Then it stopped, and this—” she gestured helplessly at the forest—“was here.”
“Felt like my guts were being turned inside out,” the trucker interrupted, “Never seen nothin’ like it.”
Cale nodded, kneeling to inspect the severed road. The air felt strange, charged with an almost electrical energy. He reached out cautiously, running his fingers along the edge of the asphalt. Smooth. Far too smooth than to have been cut by anything but a laser.
He stood back up, his gaze returning to the forest. Its presence pressed against his senses, suffocating and otherworldly. The trees moved—barely perceptible, their branches swaying independently of each other in the still air. Deeper within, faint glows pulsed like fireflies, but their colors were wrong: shimmering greens and purples, pulsing in an almost rhythmic sequence.
“What do you think happened?” the business man asked, his voice trembling.
The trucker snorted. “Hell if I know. Government experiment? Wormhole? Something we ain’t supposed to see. Either way, this is some Star Trek shit.” He spat into the woods.
“Could it be… another planet?” the woman asked softly, cradling her dog closer. “Were we abducted?”
Cale’s jaw tightened. He thought of the violet light, the planet hanging in the sky, and now this—a cut road, and an alien forest. At first, he thought the planet in the sky had come to them. But now, he was starting to think they weren’t even on Vancouver Island anymore. They were the strangers in this place.
A sudden bark from the dog cut through the quiet, startling everyone. The animal strained against the woman’s grip, growling at something in the shadows beyond the forest’s edge.
A branch cracked somewhere deep in the trees. Something moved, a large shape just beyond the beam of Cale’s flashlight that caused him to put a hand on his service pistol. The tension in the air grew thicker, and the smell of ozone filled his nostrils.
Cale’s radio crackled weakly to life, breaking the tension. Boone’s voice, distorted and faint, came through: “Ten-Bravo… status…?”
Almost relieved by the distraction, Cale pressed down on the radio’s PTT, his eyes never leaving the forest. “Ten-Tango, I don’t know what I’m looking at, but… the highway’s gone. There’s a forest here. It’s not right.”
Boone’s reply was a harsh whisper, heavy with disbelief. “Say again? What’re you talking about? A forest?”
The radio crackled again, another voice cutting in. “Ten-Tango, this is Ten-Charlie,” Shelly’s voice came through, steady but tense. “I’m just by where Peerless Road… should have been. Same thing here—road’s severed, and there’s a forest where there shouldn’t be one. Doesn’t look at all like the one we’re used to. Got a few southbound travelers with me, saying they saw the light too.”
Cale swallowed hard. His eyes flicked off to the subtle curve in the cut. If the forest was on the south end of town, too, that suggested the entire town was carved out of the earth and dropped… somewhere else. He struggled to think about it.
“I’m also getting movement in the trees,” Shelly added grimly.
Boone cursed loudly over the line. “Alright, both of you, listen up. Phones are out, and this is getting out of hand. People are going to start gathering. Rendezvous with me at City Hall, the mayor’ll head there right away. We need to figure out what the hell’s going on and give them some answers.”
Cale hesitated, his flashlight beam lingering on the forest. “Understood. On my way.”
He turned back to the group of stranded travelers. “You better head into town,” he said, inclining his head toward the strange forest. “We don’t know what’s in there, and I suspect you’d all rather not find out right now either.”
They nodded numbly. Cale climbed back into his cruiser and they all began to go back to their vehicles. As Cale turned around and started driving back toward town, he began to question everything he thought he knew.